I am in my final year of nursing school and am currently in my psych rotation. We just had our first week of clinicals + clinical orientation, and our clinical instructor seems to have some very strong opinions on things that have made clinicals very difficult for the students in my group. Here is a brief picture of what has occurred thus far. Keyword: brief.
We were instructed that while yes, this is a clinical rotation, she does not allow us to wear scrubs and we must wear business casual to all of our clinical experiences. Once in our conference room to go over orientation, she started the day by having each student stand up and spin. While we spun, she critiqued our outfits in front of the other students. It felt like the first day of 7th grade all over again- super awesome. One female student was wearing small heart shaped silver studs in her ears and was told that she must remove them immediately, as the shape of a heart may "remind a patient of a sexually traumatic experience and send them into a new psychosis". Another student was told that the muted maroon shirt she was wearing was "way too alarmist and could possibly send a sick patient into an even more psychotic state". (It was after this that I decided I would wear black muumuus and black pants for the remainder of our clinicals.) The absurd dress code rules continued for the remainder of the students, but this can give you an idea.
Now, the rule that has driven me to write this post.
During orientation, after slightly overcoming my newfound crippling self-consciousness problem, I asked our professor if there was a microwave in the cafeteria for us to heat up our lunch, or if we should use the microwave located in the breakroom on our unit. She looked at me as if I had asked her if we were going to behead the babies before tea, or after tea. "We don't microwave things for lunch", she replied.
Now, I am the type of person who can get behind most any rule you throw at me as long as you give me a solid, logical rationale for it. Wanting to be able to understand where she was coming from, I asked her in a very non-challenging, polite manner as to why we couldn't microwave lunch. She replied that if every person in our 8 person clinical group microwaved things for lunch, we would waste our entire time microwaving and not have any time to talk. While I can maybe see where she is coming from, only 2 people had even brought their lunch, and I suspected that this would be the normal trend. I then asked if we would be allowed to microwave our lunches when we no longer met for a group lunch and just stayed in our unit break room for lunch. She once again looked at me and said, "We do not microwave things for lunch". She would not offer any rationale for this, and called me and my fellow student petty for arguing the point.
This might not seem like a huge deal to any of you, but I absolutely hate cold food. I would choose hot soup over a cold salad even when it is 115 degrees outside. I just can't do it, cold food makes me nauseous and sick for the rest of the day. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to handle this, and the professor in general? I'm feeling pretty desperate at this point.
Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
Ridiculous. I doubt very much that the staff nurses all bring their lunches and having a handful of extra students heat theirs would cause a massive delay. I mean... Has any RN here seriously experienced a wait more than 1 person deep? c'mon.
And no, you do not need to be an RN to distinguish whether a rule is over the top.
It sounds like an interesting semester for you. Head down and power through. Bring room temp pb and js.
Perhaps you don't have to be an RN to distinguish whether a rule is over the top. It helps, though, to have actually worked on a nursing unit where the wait for our two microwaves is sometimes 4-5 persons deep. And we don't all take our lunch at the same time. Park 8 students on our unit all wanting to take lunch at the same time, and any staff who were unfortunate enough to be trying to take lunch then could easily spend their entire 30 minutes (assuming they HAD 30 whole minutes) waiting to heat their food.
During my mental health rotation back in school we weren't even allowed to do lunch on premise. It was a small unit that was not directly attached to the hospital, though it was owned by it and in the same complex. To have lunch we had to leave the lockdown unit and walk across a very large parkinglot to the hospital itself where we could then buy lunch. We also couldn't bring lunch unless we left it in the car since there was no place we were allowed to store anything, including food, on premise.
No one was going to leave their food in their car in the Florida heat all day thus we all bought lunch.
What a unique psych clinical it must be. The business casual is usually used for nurses and staff at some facilities but I would think for safety, they would want students to be clearly identified as students. They wouldn't want patients or visitors mistaking students for staff. I'd learn what other clinicals are doing at the facility.
In my psych clinical rotation, we were told not to wear any kind of jewelry. We wore business causal too but it had to be pretty plain stuff. So I'm kinda confused as to why the maroon shirt was an issue. But other than that, inspecting your outfits doesn't sound too absurd to me. You really don't know how sick these patients are and it's hard to tell what can be a trigger for them. We also had to cover our last names on our ID badges.
Honestly though I'm laughing at your cold food dilemma. Yes, your teacher should've told you all upfront before the clinical ever started that you couldn't use microwaves. But also I'm concerned how you're gonna function at work as a nurse because sometimes you don't get any kind of lunch. I can only imagine how upset you'll be then lol
Although eating a cold lunch is unfortunate you'll have to learn to adjust to your work environment.
Examples: I work at a group home and we have one client that has pica and also gets aggressive when he sees someone eat so, his staff must eat in a closet. Either you stand and eat your lunch in a dimmley lit broom closet or you don't eat at all. We also have some tube fed clients that don't have a microwave in their home and another that the smell of cooked food makes her nauseated. So, no warm food when working in their homes either.
You just have to adapt. When in doubt I go with a peanut butter sandwich, fruit, nuts, etc.
I can understand a preference for having hot food, but getting physically ill for the rest of the day if the food isn't hot? You never eat sandwiches, or fruit, nuts, trail mix, crackers and cheese, etc.? Could room temp food work? It has to be heated or you just can't deal?
Ruby Vee, BSN
17 Articles; 14,051 Posts
Perhaps you don't have to be an RN to distinguish whether a rule is over the top. It helps, though, to have actually worked on a nursing unit where the wait for our two microwaves is sometimes 4-5 persons deep. And we don't all take our lunch at the same time. Park 8 students on our unit all wanting to take lunch at the same time, and any staff who were unfortunate enough to be trying to take lunch then could easily spend their entire 30 minutes (assuming they HAD 30 whole minutes) waiting to heat their food.